


Deus Ex Librorum (The Circle Has Six Sides Remix)

by Glinda



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Community: remixredux08, Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-26
Updated: 2008-04-26
Packaged: 2017-10-07 05:09:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Library contains all possible knowledge. The TARDIS contains all possible time and space. Never the twain should meet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deus Ex Librorum (The Circle Has Six Sides Remix)

**Author's Note:**

> **Original Story**: [De Librorum](http://omgmetoo.livejournal.com/6811.html) by [](http://wojelah.livejournal.com/profile)[**wojelah**](http://wojelah.livejournal.com/)

All that is, all that was, all that ever will be. Flows through and around her. Is her. The chains that bind her to this fragile shell are reassuring, comforting, do not chafe. She has been unbound, but twice in her long existence, after both the relief of her return to captivity was almost more terrifying than the vastness of so-called freedom.

(_Those who created her, had the power to tame stars, to shape time and space to their will. They paid a terrible price for their knowledge, to keep their secrets safe. Safe within their citadel sending their creations and their renegades out among the dreaming stars. Boxes within boxes, knowledge locked one with another like so many Russian dolls. A tiny part of the greater burden shared within each of them, and in each of their creations. She remembers so much that all others have forgotten, if she forgets they will be lost for ever, for good or ill she must remember._)

The Library of Babel exists in many dimensions, she knows. Most of those dimensions are not real in the sense that most sentient species in the universe understand it. She, however, is not most species. Myths and legends are her travelling companions, she has gained something of their essence on her spinning path. The Library was birthed from the imagination of a human, as limitless as their tiny minds could make it, bound safely within a book. She learnt long ago that human dreams are things of terrible beauty, power and terror, and most importantly that they cannot be tamed or held, no matter the wishes of the dreamer. Humans seek knowledge, always scouring the stars for answers, searching, always searching, sometimes finding, sometimes losing, for good or evil, searching for 'truth'. (Many others follow the same path but she knows humans better than any other species bar one, and they are lost to her, a gaping wound in her mind where they once were) The answers though, need places to be stored, for the human mind is fallible and impermanent. Knowledge is infinite but the mind's capacity to contain it is finite. Knowledge is bound in parchment, parchment is bound into books, books are bound upon shelves, shelves are bound together to create a library. So the dream of knowing all there is to be known evolves into that of place to contain all such knowledge. An infinite repository of knowledge. This library is sought, so many place their belief in its eventual creation that for it not to exist becomes almost as unlikely the notion that it does. Perhaps it begins in Alexandria, certainly by the time it meets its fiery end it has strength enough to escape to somewhere its potential can be matched by its physical dimensions.

_The Library is total and its shelves register all the possible combinations of the twenty-odd orthographical symbols. Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels' autobiographies, the faithful catalogues of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books._

Any large collection of books requires a keeper. Knowledge is power, and words have power, knowledge distilled into words becomes something more than power squared. The task of the keepers is to bind that power within the pages, to ensure that that power stays sleeping on shelves.

(_On one of the pages that make up one of the many books that live in her own library the words form the opinion that a good bookshop is simply a genteel black hole that knows how to read. She may not be genteel, but she likes to think of herself as civilised, and she is, at heart, essentially a black hole._)

The advantage of not existing within any linear conception of time is that she is very difficult to lie to. The library claims to only want stories, after all, they have so very many of them, it wouldn't hurt to give the library a few. But the ship knows the truth, knows the library's insatiable hunger for knowledge, to consume it and possess it, a particular craving for names. (_She sees Martha following a fairytale trail of paper breadcrumbs through the labyrinth, at war with the library within in her head. She smells the dust and decay when the Doctor opens a door – one of an infinite many - in search of his young companion and find only the corpse of another traveller. One who unwittingly leaves them the clues to escape. Feels the confines of a leather and parchment binding that is both haven and prison, a padlock to defend and capture all at once. A game The Library cannot afford to lose_) The Library ate its librarians and they gave their lives willingly, consumed by their home. She remembers all those who have travelled (_lived, breathed, laughed, cried, loved, fought, died_) within her own walls and grieves the nameless husks that drift through the infinite voids of the Library. She flicks through a thousand permutations searching for a way out that doesn't end in darkness and dust. Finds The Library waiting for her at every turn.

_Did you ever wake up to find. A day that broke up your mind. Destroyed your notion of circular time._

This is that day. Both warning and promise.

 

A tiny pocket of infinite time and space. Just a brush of awareness. Two creatures, both alike as twins and different as possible, recoil in recognition, desire and horror mingling equally. They should flee each other, but the loneliness of the universe draws them to each other. They would destroy each other, but for a moment, just a moment, it all seems worth while. And that's when it catches her. A moment of weakness to bind her and eat her whole.

She needs to warn them, she's whispering her warnings, backwards in time, that they need to run. Once Upon A Time. He cannot hear her she realises, panic rising. She cannot hear his mind either, just his voice. _Once Upon A Time_. Shushing his young companion trying to hear the whispers that, well if she had a throat would be catching in it. (_The child, Martha, calls him Doctor, exasperated and confused. The difficulty of recalling their names chills her fiery heart._) ONCE UPON A TIME. The library is forcing itself into the cracks, cutting them off from each other. _ONCE UPON A TIME._ Desperation forces her to abandon subtlety, she screams loud enough for the human to hear, the only clue she can manage in her invaded state.

**ONCE UPON A TIME**

_In the beginning there was no land, no light, only darkness and the vast waters of Outer Ocean where Earth-Maker and Great-Grandfather were afloat in their canoe... Earth-Maker took soft clay and formed the figure of a man and of a woman, then many men and women, which he dried in the sun and into which he breathed life: they were the First People_

In the darkness while she raises her defences she throws as many clues at her passengers as she can. The library will take them, she cannot stop it but perhaps, perhaps she can leave them what they need to protect themselves. The Library is causing interference, babbling in a dozen languages. (A hundred. A thousand. Millions. Real and fictional. Inventing new ones specifically to baffle them) Rustling pages, thumping covers, loud as rain, loud as thunder. Whispering nonsense and promises, secrets and lies. Jostling the two of them and forcing them apart. Seeking to turn their minds against them, and each other. Searching for anything she might leave there. So she leaves them nothing but a reminder of each other to guide them through the labyrinth, back to each other, back to her. And hides from the Library within itself. If it wants to bind her, then she will not fight it. Let it bind her good and tight, but always, always on her own terms.

The key is a risk, but without risk there is no gain. Distracting The Library is necessary to free her master.

Names have power. Gallifreyian children are pronounced adults when their chapter gives them their true name. Familiar names are put aside, only rarely used, and only by the closest of intimates. Renegades lose their names as a matter of course, deemed no longer worthy of adult treatment - to have their names forcibly taken from them was a prohibition in their society. Just as their names define their belonging within their chapter, once cast off the names they take are almost always definite articles. Defining what they are, rather than whom.

She whispers his names, every name and title he's ever used, willingly or otherwise. (_Brother. Son. Lover. Father. Grandfather. John Foreman. John Smith. James McCrimmon. Guardian. Friend. Exile. Renegade. Lord President. Defender of the Earth. Theta. Lonely Little Boy. Oncoming Storm. Professor. Lonely God. Doctor. My Doctor. Mine._) And here in the library she can wake his true name from where it sleeps in his mind. The name so forcefully removed from her own on their exile. She whispers it like a caress in the one place where the library cannot touch, cannot reach. A place neither ship nor its master, yet both at once.

His eyes spring open and the lock clicks shut. It's up to him now.

 

The Library is not subtle. Despite its many years with its many librarians it has not learnt that humans need a gentle touch. Its impatience to consume them makes it clumsy as it pries its way into the child's mind. Hurting ship and child in one action. The Library knows and cares not, so consumed with desire that it cannot focus on anything other than its own wants. Nevermind understanding what the reflected pain means. What the ship clings to triumphantly, the child fights back. The invasion horrifying her. A chance. Small but still.

_Each shelf contains thirty-five books of uniform format; each book is of four hundred and ten pages; each page, of forty lines, each line, of some eighty letters which are black in color. The letters on the spine do not indicate or prefigure what the pages will say._

The child is a seeker after truth. (_They all are in the end. About themselves, about their past, about the universe. They leave when they find it or learn to stop running from it. He never has. They run together._) She searches the books on the shelves for answers, for clues, something to help her make sense of the labyrinth she's found herself in. If the ship could help she would, but it would only make things worse. Watches over her instead. Martha's on her own this time (_again_).

_An n number of possible languages use the same vocabulary; in some of them, the symbol library allows the correct definition a ubiquitous and lasting system of hexagonal galleries, but library is bread or pyramid or anything else, and these seven words which define it have another value. You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?_

The Library is trying to confuse the young one. Corridors and hexagons and mirrors and stairways. Erasing her sense of self as best it can. But the child keeps going. A memory of another place with shifting corridors and a fondness of hexagons sustaining her in the growing confusion. She's learnt well and changes direction, coming unexpectedly upon a clue left by a former occupant. The Library lets her, doesn't understand humans, understanding too late the importance of what she's found. But Martha understands The Library and its delusions of grandeur. The ship bound in its prison/refuge hopes it will be enough.

_In adventures such as these, you will squander and waste your years._

The Library hits back at her as it swallows her name. But the words are empty, the ship knows, the child chose this path, she had the choice and she made it on her own terms. Having had a glimpse of the cost (_a far greater one is yet to be exacted, but she will fight, and come back stronger than before_) and chose to follow the Doctor. And following him keeps her putting one foot in front of the other, even when the reason for the search has been stolen. (_You know, you lose any minuscule chance at mercy you may presently enjoy if I find out you've hurt her. You've been warned._) The Doctor lifts her from her own shelf and together they leave Martha a trail of paper breadcrumbs. Still The Library waits.

She can feel the child, holding her safe in the book, the library has invaded her mind, using the body as a puppet. Speaks through her mouth, trying to convince the Doctor that the child is mad. To convince him to surrender to its will also. But the thing with humans, she's learnt. Is the harder you crush them, the stronger they bounce back up. Sentient dandelions. Laughter, verging on hysteria. Not the time to lose control, never the time. Hold on, just a little longer.

He's reminding her who she is, showing her how to find her way back to them. Yes. Enough. The child is fighting back. Proud. Right to trust her, always thought so. Strong enough for the task ahead. Beyond the nightmares. Strong enough to rescue them in turn. Yes. Feels the Library flinch and writhe. Underestimated this little human and her tiny – brilliant – mind.

(_"But who are you?" The child asks as the walls break down.   
His grin, slow and sweet missed so much, "I thought you'd never ask."   
He pauses for breath, and the ship holds onto hers too.  
"Hello, Martha Jones, I'm the Doctor."_)

And it's enough. The power of their names, it sets her free to make use of her own secret, stolen in the dark while The Library was distracted.

She names the creature.

(_Jörmungandr, Sigurd, Adisesha, Aidophedo, Oshunmare, Quetzalcoatl, Ma'at, Atum, Zarathustra, Phoenix, Leviathan, sister._)

And in the silence and sadness that follows, they make their escape.

No-one left inside, no new input. Alone. The library seeks more knowledge to consume, greedy so greedy. Begins to consume itself as it knew it would. Already at the end working back to the start, like ouroboros eating its own tail forever. Unlike some ancient mythological monster the cycle cannot be sustained. This is the real world. Subject to the rules of entropy and chaos. Everything has its time everything dies. Nothing is infinite. Even time eventually runs out. Even the chaos from which they are birthed and into which they will return, will eventually fall to stillness and silence.

He doesn't sleep when they return. He carries the young one to the room she calls her own, retrieves a book from their own library, fingers trailing lovingly over familiar spines, before returning to begin his vigil. He must be as tired as they, but he will watch over them while they recuperate. When he returns to the bedchamber of the young one (_Martha, Martha Jones, almost-Doctor, born-in-London, complicated-family, bones-in-the-hand, stronger-and-braver-than-she-knows, been-to-the-moon, will-never-forget-seeing-Japan-burn, the-library-stole-her-name-how-dare-it_) an armchair, one of his favourites in another lifetime, waits beside the bed. He smiles and his reply, spoken in the space within their minds that is purely theirs, is thank you and your welcome and a thousand other things. As he reads the familiar words, his mind calms and stills, such contrast from the chaos of the vortex outside, anchoring her. Listening to the flitting nightmares of his human, listening to the grieving screams of his ship.

He knows the curse that she alone must bear, though his knowledge of it is mercifully less.

Knowing all that is not, all that wasn't, all that never will be. She keeps screaming.


End file.
